President Donald Trump speaks at Burning Hills Amphitheatre during the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opening ceremony on Wednesday. | AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson
Republicans are heading home for the July Fourth recess with a sinking feeling on the economy — the biggest issue poised to tip voters in this year’s midterms.
Job growth slowed last month. Employers added a less-than-expected 57,000 jobs in June, according to Labor Department statistics out today. That’s far below the 129,000 jobs added in May and comes amid high anxiety about the state of the country’s economy. Average hourly earnings increased by 3.5, failing to keep up with inflation.
That’s not to say the numbers were all bad. The unemployment rate — an arguably better indicator of market health — dropped to 4.2 percent, and private-sector job growth is expanding at the strongest rate of Trump’s second term.
The overall takeaway is that the U.S. labor market is humming along at a solid clip by many indicators. But critically, Americans aren’t feeling it, POLITICO’s Sam Sutton and Victoria Guida note. It’s a similar problem that former President Joe Biden faced: Voter confidence has been shaken by rising prices. In other words, a solid job market is being overtaken by crushing inflation.
“The Trump economy is FAILING hardworking Americans,” the House Democrats X account posted this morning in a plain example of the party’s comms plan. “Fewer jobs means fewer opportunities to feed your family.”
Trump surged back to the White House in 2024 in large part because voters trusted him on the economy more than former VP Kamala Harris. The White House is aware of the political liability posed by voters’ pocketbook unease — and it’s working hard to quell concerns.
The president has blamed gas prices not falling fast enough on oil retailers and called on the DOJ to investigate them. His “Trump Accounts” — a savings and investment vehicle for kids that start with $1,000 in seed money from the federal government — go live on July Fourth. And he constantly hammers the strength of the market, sharing a link this morning to an article called “S&P 500 closes with strongest quarter since 2020.”
And the White House is pitching its message just as hard as Democrats. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt celebrated today’s numbers as a sign of success for Trump’s immigration crackdown, applauding how “the foreign-born labor force has fallen sharply over the past year.”
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1. HOT ON THE LEFT: Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) backed Abdul El-Sayed today in the Michigan Democratic Senate primary — an endorsement from perhaps the highest-profile progressive lawmaker that could give El-Sayed a critical boost just over a month before the state’s Aug. 4 primary. Ocasio-Cortez’s endorsement comes as El-Sayed is locked in a tight race against more moderate Democrats Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) and state Sen. Mallory McMorrow. It also pits AOC against Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who she could challenge for his seat in 2028. Schumer has lined up behind Stevens. More from POLITICO’s Gregory Svirnovskiy
2. BRAVE NEW WORLD: OpenAi has floated giving the U.S. government a 5 percent stake as it “seeks to clear political obstacles by securing financial buy-in from the Trump administration,” FT’s Cristina Criddle and George Hammond scooped. “Sam Altman, chief executive of the ChatGPT maker, has argued that giving the public a financial stake in the company is the best way to share the upside of AI and has suggested a stake of this size in early conversations with the administration, according to two people familiar with the talks. The proposed arrangement would involve other US AI companies handing over a similar stake, although it is not clear if the other labs would be willing to do so.”
3. PAC IT UP: “G.O.P. Senate Candidates Quietly Move to Gain an Extra Cash Edge,” by NYT’s Theodore Schleifer: “For the first time, most Republican nominees in battleground states are drawing support from their own well-funded super PACs. The little-noticed shift allows them to raise more money, adding to the party’s advantage in super PAC cash over Democrats. That edge could prove important in the midterms, even if the Supreme Court’s major recent campaign-finance decision shakes up how much candidates rely on super PACs.”
4. DIGGING DEEPER: The FBI is ordering personnel from all field offices to assist its probe into the 2020 election in Georgia, MS NOW’s Ken Dilanian reports. The bureau has authorized analysts to work overtime, including weekends and holidays, in a “priority investigation” to find evidence supporting Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. Asked what the analysts were searching for, one anonymous official told MS NOW: “Looking for derogatory information is the short answer. The idea is to build a case. Look at associations between people, look into their social media, their business activity, travel, contact with other investigative subjects.”
5. FOR YOUR RADAR: “House Ethics says it doesn’t have information to share on lawmaker sexual misconduct settlements,” by POLITICO’s Hailey Fuchs: “The House adopted a resolution Tuesday requiring the House Ethics Committee to release information on taxpayer funds used to pay out sexual misconduct settlements with lawmakers — but the committee now says it has no information it can share. … Instead, the bipartisan Ethics Committee said it was up to the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights to publicly release a list of each member who has received settlements for sexual misconduct allegations, as mandated by the resolution championed by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).”
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TALK OF THE TOWN
NOT COOL — The heatwave crashing over much of the Northeast is so severe that Washington tomorrow is projected to reach 105 decrees — hotter than 99 percent of places on Earth, according to WaPo’s Ben Noll. … Find a public pool
HAPPY FOURTH — Some donors who intended to give to the bipartisan, congressionally chartered America250 initiative were instead steered to the White House-backed Freedom 250, Democrats on the House Natural Resources Committee charged in a report released today. The report did not identify donors in order to protect whistleblowers’ identities, the Democrats said. More from WaPo’s Ben Binday and Dan Diamond
WHAT 850,000 FIREWORKS LOOKS LIKE — “Has Trump Undersold His Fireworks Show? A Visual Exploration,” by City Cast DC’s Alyssa Fowers: “It’s a little hard to imagine a 40-fold increase, especially since this year’s show will be more than twice as long as those in the past. So let’s break it down to a 30-second sample of each show.”
COUNTERINTUITIVE? — “The Capital Is a Mess,” by The Atlantic’s Matt Viser: “Throughout the city, there are government signs proclaiming, ‘We are making D.C. safe and beautiful.’ D.C. may be relatively safe, but much of it certainly isn’t beautiful.”
BONUS BIRTHDAY: James Barbour, who has joined up-and-coming comms and strategy agency Throughline Global Advisors. He previously worked at Schneider Electric.
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